Cathy Welch
Associate Adjunct Professor
cwelch@austincc.edu

Cathy Welch has loved movies and moviemaking since childhood. She is Adjunct Professor of Radio-Television-Film at Austin Community College where she currently teaches Writing for Radio, Television, and Film and Introduction to Cinema. During her eighteen years at ACC, she has also taught Introduction to Television Technology, Introduction to Radio and Television, Film History, and Film Appreciation. In addition, she is the Instructional Associate for English and Writing at ACC’s Northridge Campus Learning Lab. She has also taught screenwriting, directing, and editing at Austin School of Film.

Cathy Welch earned a Master’s Degree in Communications with a major in film production and a minor in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin. Her thesis film, “Pickman’s Model,” has played at Dobie Mall Cinema, Alamo Drafthouse, and the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. Her undergraduate degree is from UT’s prestigious honors program, Plan II. Her concentration in Plan II was in zoology, and she received special honors for her research on cystic fibrosis.

Cathy Welch spent six years in Los Angeles in the 1980s working on feature films, including the Academy Award-winning Kiss of the Spider Woman. She also worked for Hughes Aircraft Company as a post-production supervisor for training films, press releases, and other video product-marketing materials and as assistant to the producer and screenplay reader and editor for a small independent film production company on the Burbank Studios lot. In addition, she wrote, produced, and directed episodes of a cable television show about personal computers.

Cathy Welch has engaged in many film and video projects in Austin, Texas, including producing and directing a short horror film as part of teaching an acting for film class at Zachary Scott Theatre Center’s Performing Arts School, working as editing consultant on the documentary Bat City U.S.A., a film about Austin’s famous bat population by journalist Laura Brooks, editing an advertising and promotional video for fashionable Silver Stars jewelry and an avant-garde music and dance video for Corps Multiple artists Francois Minaux and Sandie Donzica, and serving as second unit director for the recent acclaimed Joe O’Connell documentary Rondo and Bob, the story of Bob Burns, filmmaker and art director for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and his fascination with Rondo Hatton, a journalist and actor who starred in Hollywood horror films of the 1940s as the Creeper because of his elongated features caused by the disorder acromegaly.

Cathy Welch is a freelance consultant to screenwriters, and she counts former students from her academic classes among her clients. She truly loves working with filmmakers and students and helping them to succeed in both their artistic and academic endeavors while continuing to work on her own film and writing projects.